Background
John Thompson Hodgen was born on January 29, 1826 in Hodgenville, Kentucky, United States. He was the son of Jacob Hodgen, an elder in the Christian Church, and Frances Park Brown.
John Thompson Hodgen was born on January 29, 1826 in Hodgenville, Kentucky, United States. He was the son of Jacob Hodgen, an elder in the Christian Church, and Frances Park Brown.
Hodgen received his primary education in the county school of Pittsfield, Illinois, later attending Bethany College, in what is now West Virginia, and finally, in March 1848, graduating from McDowell's College of Medicine in St. Louis, which institution subsequently became the medical department of the University of the State of Missouri.
Hodgen served first as assistant resident physician and then as resident physician of the St. Louis City Hospital until June 1849, and later was demonstrator of anatomy in the Missouri Medical College, advancing to the grade of professor of anatomy in 1854. He held this chair until 1858, and those of anatomy and physiology from 1858 to 1864.
During the Civil War he served as surgeon-general of the Western Sanitary Commission, and as surgeon-general of Missouri (1862-1864). In 1864 he was called to the chair of physiology in the St. Louis Medical College, where he also filled the chair of anatomy. The following year he became dean of the school, holding this office for the remainder of his life. He also taught surgery at the City Hospital of St. Louis, from 1864 until his death. He was elected president of the American Medical Association in 1881 and was one of the charter members of the American Surgical Association. His death was occasioned by acute peritonitis, following perforation of the gall bladder.
He published numerous pamphlets, most of them reprints of articles that appeared in the St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal. Among them are On Fractures (1870); On the Treatment of Fractures of the Femur (1871); Treatment of Oblique and Compound Fractures of the Leg (1871); A Modification of the Usual Operation for "Lacerated Perineum"; Cell or Skin Grafting (1871).
Hodgen was one of the most renowned doctors and surgeons of his time. He was also by instinct and inclination mechanical, and probably the most noteworthy and lasting contribution that he made to surgery was the splint which still carries his name. It is a modification of the Nathan R. Smith anterior suspension splint for fractures of the femur. Hodgen, by an arrangement consisting of a simple steel-bar frame with pulleys and a suspension cord, developed a device that secures traction and permits suspension, flexion, and rotation, making it possible not only to attain unusually admirable results in the treatment of fracture of the femur, but also to furnish the patient an incredible degree of comfort during the stage of healing. In addition to this splint, he devised a tracheal foreign-body forceps, a wire suspension splint for fractures of the arm, and a hairpin dilator for tracheotomy wounds.
Hodgen was a member of the St. Louis Board of Health, president of the St. Louis Medical Society, chairman of the Surgical Section of the American Medical Association, president of the Missouri State Medical Association, member of the International Medical Congress, one of the founders of the American Surgical Association, and president of the American Medical Association.
On March 28, 1854, he married Elizabeth Delphine Mudd. Between 1855 and 1873, Elizabeth gave birth to their four sons, but two of them died in infancy.
